Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book is the first anthology of English-language nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744. It contains the oldest printed texts of many well-known and popular rhymes, as well as several that eventually dropped out of the canon of rhymes for children. In 2013 a facsimile edition with an introduction by Andrea Immel and Brian Alderson was published by the Cotsen Occasional Press.
Contents
Publication
With the full title: Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book Voll. [sic] II, this was a sequel to the now lost Tommy Thumb's Song Book, published in London by Mary Cooper in 1744.[1] For many years, it was thought that there was only a single copy in existence, now in the British Library,[2] but in 2001 another copy appeared and was sold for £45,000.[3] An earlier collection, Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose's Melodies, was supposedly published in Boston in 1719, but the location has been disputed,[4] and no record of any such work exists. Henry Carey's 1725 satire on Ambrose Philips, Namby Pamby, quotes or alludes to some half-dozen or so nursery rhymes. As a result, this is the oldest printed collection of English nursery rhymes that is available.[5] The rhymes and illustrations were printed from copper plates, the text being stamped with punches into the lates, a technique borrowed from map and music printing. It is 3x13⁄4 inches and it is printed in alternate openings in red and black ink.[5]
Contents
The book contains forty nursery rhymes, many of which are still popular, including;
- Baa Baa Black Sheep
- Girls and Boys Come Out To Play
- Hickory Dickory Dock
- Ladybird Ladybird
- Little Robin Redbreast
- Little Tommy Tucker
- London Bridge is Falling Down
- Mary Mary Quite Contrary
- Oranges and Lemons
- Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross
- Sing a Song of Sixpence
- There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill
- Who Killed Cock Robin?
There are also a number of less familiar rhymes, some of which were probably unsuitable for later sensibilities, including:
- Piss a Bed,
- Piss a Bed,
- Barley Butt,
- Your Bum is so heavy,
- You can't get up.
Some nursery rhymes turn up in disguise:
- The Moon shines Bright,
- The Stars give a light,
- And you may kiss
- A pretty girl
- At ten a clock at night.
This is an earlier version of:
- When I was a little boy
- My mammy kept me in,
- Now I am a great boy,
- I'm fit to serve the king.
- I can handle a musket,
- And I can smoke a pipe.
- And I can kiss a pretty girl
- At twelve o'clock at night.[6]
References
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- ↑ British Library, http://entrypoint.bl.uk/Results.aspx?query=tommy+thumb%27s+pretty+song+book&Web=True&OG=True&ILS=True&BLD=True&imageField.x=50&imageField.y=13, retrieved 14 November 2009.
- ↑ "News in Brief", 13 December 2001, Telegraph.co.uk, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1365141/News-in-brief.html, retrieved 14 November 09.
- ↑ "MOTHER GOOSE.; Longevity of the Boston Myth – The Facts of History in this Matter", New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D00E1DD1730E132A25757C0A9649C94689ED7CF, retrieved 14 November 2009.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 533–4.
- ↑ William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose, pp. 24–43.
